1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup white flour
1 cup (or more) white flour
This simple, painless and quick method of making fresh pasta using a food
processor is much simpler than the length of the instructions, which
include directions for dealing with problems, would lead you to believe.
This technique solves the basic problem in pasta making: getting a dough
with just the right amount of moisture so that it's neither too soft and
sticky nor too dry and hard to work. You start with the moist ingredients
(egg and olive oil), then add just enough flour that the dough first
gathers into a ball, then breaks up into granules, then gathers itself up
again. When that happens, you know you've got just the right moisture
content, and you can reward yourself by letting the processor do the
kneading for you.
The semolina or whole wheat flour that is added first can be used to give
the pasta more body (semolina has more gluten than standard flour) or make
it more wholesome. They're added first to give these hard-to-work
ingredients more chance to dissolve in liquid. You can use as much of them
as you like as long as the mixture is still a batter, to give the processor
a chance to do its thing.
The first time you make pasta this way, add flour in smaller increments.
With experience you'll get a better feel for how fast to proceed, and after
three or four batches you'll have a batch of noodles ready in under 10
minutes. Also with experience, you will determine the capacity of your
processor; too large a batch will always gum up the works.
Place the eggs, olive oil and salt in the bowl of the food processor and
whirl briefly to blend. If using semolina flour or whole-wheat flour, add
and process for 15 seconds. This mixture is supposed to make a thick
batter, so feel free to add extra flour at this point.
Add remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time until dough forms a ball. Continue
adding flour, 1/4 cup at a time, until the ball breaks up into bead-like
granules. If the blob doesn't break up and it doesn't absorb the flour
either (that is, you wind up with a blob of dough and flour whirling around
in the bottom), then take out the dough and, with the processor running,
feed inch-size pieces of the dough back through the feed chute so that they
break up on impact. If the dough is really sticky, add a couple
tablespoons of flour first.
If the dough has just the right amount of moisture, it will break up, whirl
around for a few seconds, then start gathering itself back up into a ball,
ultimately picking up all the stray pieces and rolling around the inside
of the processor bowl, making a terrible racket and causing the processor
to walk across the counter. When that happens, congratulations! Let it
knead itself this way for 15 seconds, then stop the processor, remove the
dough to a covered bowl and let it sit for 15 minutes. Proceed to roll it
out with machine or rolling pin for the pasta dish of your choice.
If the dough doesn't gather itself up again, it's usually either because it
is too dry (it stays granular) or because the gathering process didn't get
started properly (it sticks to the inside of the bowl and eventually stops
whirling entirely). If the former, add water through the feed chute with
the processor running, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough gathers. If
it gathers on the side of the bowl instead of in a ball, then stop the
processor, grab some out, form it into a ball, return to the bowl and start
the processor again. This will usually pick up the rest of the dough, and
off you go. If not, add a tablespoon of flour, process it for a second, and
repeat.
Serves 2 to 4
This recipe is from http://recipes.chef2chef.net/recipe-archive/25/139766.shtml
